70

SYMPATHY OF THE COUNTRY.

pose of the act, as the Americans construed it, was to bring French influence in Canada to the support of the ministry and to make Quebec an offset against New Eng land.

The closing of the port of Boston had an effect not anticipated by its promoters.1 Every sea-port town in America realized its own danger and was anxious to sympathize with Boston, and the bill, therefore, only strengthened the sentiment of American Union. It had been growing rapidly during the last few months and chiefly through the activity of the Committees of Correspondence and the Sons of Liberty, who were now assuming the functions and proportions of a political party.

The town-meeting in Boston, called to consider the bill, had sent out an appeal for help and imposed an embargo on all English importations.2 The embargo was suggested from the numerous voluntary associations already existing in the provinces. Sympathy with Boston, which naturally would be more active in sea-port towns than in rural communities, was most active in New York City, whose Committee of Correspondence, like most of the committees in the country, consisted of active men of the middle class, who were freer to participate in the popular movement than older, wealthier and better known men could be. The adoption of a non-importation policy meant a serious blow to commerce, and naturally ardent patriots hesitated to advocate it. Before adopting it, might not another attempt be made, on behalf of the whole country, to influence Parliament to abandon its objectionable policy? The

3

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 2d Series, ii, 481; New Jersey Archives, X, 457.

2 Mass. Hist. Proc. xi, 392; xii, 45-46-47.

See also the "Solemn League and Covenant," not to use British goods, adopted by the Mass. Prov. Assembly, June 23, 1774, in the Mass. Gazette of that date.

New York committee, in reply to the Boston appeal, recommended that a Congress of deputies from all the colonies meet to consider the condition of the country; thus the suggestion of a Continental Congress originated in the conservative sentiments of the New York merchants.1

It was an epoch-making suggestion, and a firm step toward independence.2 It was approved by Connecticut and Rhode Island and soon after by other colonies. But another and far more moving appeal went forth to the people, written by Thomas Paine under the taking title, "Common Sense," a robust pamphlet which took the country by storm. It pronounced boldly for independence, while yet the leaders hardly dared to think of it; outlined a policy for America and plainly advised the calling of a Congress and the formation of a charter of government, or written constitution for the new nation. The pamphlet had an immediate and prodigious effect in both the new world and the old, and must be included among the primary causes of American independence. It was the first campaign document in American history, and remains to this day the most famous. As an immediate force precipitating independence, it outweighed all the plans of union, all the speeches, all the state papers that preceded it. Paine had simply written what the common people were trying to think. Along with the news from Boston, the New York request passed southward to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, whose people speedily met and expressed their approval of the suggestion. The inhabitants of the rural communities, long accustomed to depend upon their own

1 Suggested in R. I., May 17, 1774; Force, 4th Series, i, 333; by Hancock, in March, of that year; Bancroft, (Ed., 1854), vi, 508; by New York Sons of Liberty, in May, Bancroft, vii, 40; by Mass. H. R., June 17; Dawson's Westchester County, 18-20.

2 The effect of the suggestion (from whatever source it came) is best stated by Frothingham in his Rise of the Republic.

72

AN EMBARGO AGREED ON.

labor for their supplies, easily approved a non-importation policy. In Virginia, Governor Dunmore had dissolved the assembly, on the twenty-sixth of May, but it met on the next day and directed the Committee of Correspondence to ascertain whether a general Congress was expedient at this time. On the same day, the Massachusetts legislature assembled, at Salem, and speedily approved the action of the Boston town-meeting. The rapidly growing sentiment of the province against the use of British goods was utilized as a sufficient reason for recommending an embargo, and it was resolved to appeal to all the assemblies to unite in sending delegates to a general Congress, which should meet at Philadelphia, on the first of the following September. The proposal was treated as more than a mere suggestion by the election of Thomas Cushing, the Speaker; John and Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine and James Bowdoin as delegates. Their appointment, and the general democratic spirit displayed by the legislature, so displeased the Governor, General Gage, that he determined to dissolve it. His secretary, whom he sent to read his message, found the doors of the assembly chamber closed and was denied admittance, but, standing on the steps, he read the proclamation of dissolution. Thus, on the seventeenth of June, 1774, the last session of the last assembly of the province of Massachusetts came to an end. An old era closed and a new era in the history of democracy began. As the members passed from the chamber, they did not know that Rhode Island, two days before, had chosen delegates to the Congress, nor may all of them have known that Connecticut, two weeks earlier, had also authorized its Committee of Correspondence to appoint delegates.

The election, or appointment, of delegates was now going on all over the land. In New Hampshire, the control

SPREAD OF THE REVOLT.

73

of affairs was almost entirely in the hands of the Governor, but the Committee of Correspondence appointed delegates on the eighth of June. By the twenty-fifth, Maryland and New Jersey had appointed. New York was committed to appointment, but the nomination of delegates was an issue between local factions, the popular leaders in New York city and those in the upper counties not being in full accord,—but after much dispute, delegates were chosen.1 The Pennsylvania assembly was not in session, and Governor Penn refused to convene it, but at a town-meeting, the people of Philadelphia appointed a committee to represent the city and county of Philadelphia, which, co-operating with similar committees in other counties, urged the general assembly to appoint delegates. The assembly convened soon after, to take action on the state of the province in the western counties where an Indian war threatened, and chose delegates on the twenty-first of July.

Delaware and Virginia chose theirs on the first of August and on the second the assembly of South Carolina ratified the appointment made by its Committee of Safety. On the twenty-fifth, delegates were appointed by the Committee of Correspondence of North Carolina, but no delegates were chosen in Georgia, that colony being under the influence of its Governor. In several instances, as in Virginia and Massachusetts, the appointment of delegates was accompanied by resolutions, stating colonial grievances anew. These resolutions showed that the sentiment of non-importation was gaining ground. Probably the Congress about to gather would consider it carefully.

1 Philip Livingston, Isaac Lowe, John Alsopp, James Duane and John Jay were chosen for the City of Albany, and also to represent some of the towns in the counties of Dutchess and Westchester. The three southern counties sent, each, a delegate.

74

THE SUFFOLK CONVENTION.

The conduct of General Gage, in Massachusetts, and the discontent there with the late acts of Parliament now led to a more important declaration of public opinion than had yet been made. On the ninth of September, the Suffolk county convention, assembled at Milton, formally declared that the people of the province ought, in obedience to the recent acts, to instruct the tax collectors to retain the moneys in their hands until the government might be organized on a constitutional basis, and resolutions to this effect were sent to the Continental Congress which meanwhile had met at Philadelphia. The importance of the Suffolk convention in determining the character of the political system which the Americans were organizing must not be overlooked, for it was the first meeting of Americans in which the authority of the British government was deliberately denied, and measures taken, not only to nullify other acts of Parliament, but actually to seize upon the taxes and to retain them as hostages for the good conduct of the ministry. The Suffolk resolutions went further than any preceding them in declaring that government was a compact, to which the King was a party, and that, if the compact was broken, the people were dissolved from their allegiance: ideas which immediately found popular acceptance and soon found their way into the constitutions of New Jersey and Massachusetts.2

The Suffolk convention thus put the political issue in a new light. If government was founded on the natural rights of man, it was also, the convention said, a compact;

1 See the resolutions of this and of other county conventions in the appendix to the Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 1774-1775, Boston, 1838.

2 New Jersey Constitution, Preamble, 1776; Massachusetts, Preamble, 1780.